The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.
Biometric pattern matching includes use of fingerprints to register or identify a user. A pattern-under-test is compared against some other pattern, such as a preregistered pattern retrieved from a pattern storage such as a trusted data storage. The comparison indicates a “match” or a “no match” condition with further processing sometimes dependent upon that condition. That further processing may result in access to additional resources, or enhanced access to existing resources, or a host of other consequences subsequent to the evaluation of a match or a non-match.
In some systems, the pattern storage may include patterns from multiple sources of patterns. The multiple sources may include different patterns from one user (e.g., fingerprints from different fingers), different patterns from multiple users (index fingerprints of two or more users), or a combination of these examples, among other possibilities.
A system may perform a matching process in which a particular pattern-under-test is compared against individual patterns from a set of patterns in the pattern storage. Each pattern may be defined by a template, and each template may include one or more template elements. When matching a template against a pattern-under-test, some matching engines may test using individual ones of the template elements.
Those matching systems may indicate that a match exists between a pattern-under-test and a particular template when a single template element of the particular template passes a match evaluation process.
There are various measures of a quality of a pattern matching system. These measures may include false acceptance rate and false rejection rate when evaluating a match of the pattern-under-test to a set of templates. These measures of quality may decrease as a physical size of a fingerprint sensor decreases absent careful attention to implementation.
It may be desirable to provide a matching process that may improve one or more measures of quality of a matching process that uses template elements of a particular pattern template when matching that particular pattern template to a pattern-under-test.